When asked why she makes music, Pacific Northwest songwriter Beth Whitney begins a story about a transient woman she met in Modesto with a ball of tangled fishing line. “She sat next to me and she had a backpack...
What happens when you bring together two musically inventive, botany-obsessed Seattleites? You get Pikefruit, a local duo that draws on the techniques of electronic production and their love of the Pacific Northwest’s lush natural world, in the pursuit of...
With the release of their newest album, I Told You So, which drops today on Colemine Records, Seattle’s simmering soul-jazz Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio deliver on a promise they made to their fans more than two years ago. Shortly...
After the year we all just had, it’s completely understandable if you feel like giving up. But with “Don’t Give Up,” Seattle’s Sundae Crush have arrived to offer you another option: How about a therapeutic float through a neon...
In late May, while listening to police flash-bangs and screams of protestors outside his apartment in Seattle during the widespread protests following the May 25 death of George Floyd, multi-instrumentalist Jordan Thomas, a.k.a. Cool Ruins, says he felt the...
Jessica Dobson is a quiet giant of contemporary indie music. Along with performing her own material in Deep Sea Diver, Dobson has worked with indie music darlings like Beck, Conor Oberst, Spoon, and The Shins. And yet, if you...
On a bandstand, it’s not uncommon to leave space for band-members—and special guests—to solo and share their own interpretation of a song live for everyone to enjoy. But, during quarantine, while musicians and audiences are alone in their homes,...
Is it too late fix the things in the world that are broken? That was the question on powerhouse Seattle guitarist Kathy Moore’s mind when she wrote her Super Power trio’s newest single, “Bad Day’s Coming,” and started planning...
On a cold, gloomy day in late March, a few weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, singer Debby Nagusky picked up her guitar for the first time in weeks. She had just read several news articles—one about the shortage of...
According to a 2014 study by the League of American Orchestras, less than 2% of musicians in American orchestras are African American, only 4.3% of conductors are black, and composers remain predominantly white as well. Hence, as a classically-trained...
Seattle-based drummer and singer-songwriter Heather Thomas had grand plans for 2020. After releasing her sophomore EP Open Up last year, Thomas hit the road, planning a nearly year-long journey with the intention of spending each month in a different...
About three years ago, Adrienne Clark and Anthony Darnell, bandmates in Seattle new wave dance pop group Killer Workout, replied to an ad from a man who had bought out the stock of a closed-down video store. Interest piqued,...
When talking to musician Hollis Wong-Wear, it feels as though she has all the time in the world for you. This is indicative of the enjoyment she gains from meeting people and creating connections. “I am a very passionate...
Marihuzka Cornelius, aka MC, grew up in what many consider a rough part of Western Sydney, Australia. In the ’90s, you could find her dressed in regulation plaid, with Nirvana on blast in the background. It was her neighborhood’s...
What do you hear in your head when the world goes silent? This was the question Elijah Dhavvan of Seattle band Tobias the Owl set out to answer with his third full-length album Visalia. The question was originally posed...
For more than a decade, songwriter Tomo Nakayama has been a staple of the Seattle music scene—first as leader of the eight-piece chamber pop group Grand Hallway, and more recently as a solo artist known for his tender and...
Seattle-based dance-punk band The Gods Themselves are known for their ’80s-inspired sound and retro fashion, and the video that accompanies “Saved,” the first single from their upcoming fourth studio LP New Excuse (out May 1st), goes heavy on both. In...
The Spider Ferns, the Seattle-based band of couple Kelly and Alton Fleek, never felt more alone and isolated than during the latter half of last year, when they cared for Kelly’s terminally-ill mother until her passing in late 2019....
Eight years ago, Kate Voss tapped Jason Goessl on the shoulder at a party after recognizing him from a performance he had a few weeks prior. “I asked if he’d like to play music with me sometime. He gave...
Seattle-based singer Marquetta Miller met most of her fellow bandmates in blistering soul fusion band Breaks and Swells while working a cocktail bar in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. It’s in this same neighborhood, at a dive-y karaoke bar, that...
On “Home,” the new remixed single from electro-pop duo White Night, there’s a chime-like synth pattern and haunting vocal loops that swell over a percussive drumbeat. It’s classic indie electronica—and in some ways, not a sound that most people...
As far back as Seattle’s Eleni Govetas can remember there’s been Balkan music in her life. By seven years old, she knew the heat of a Greek summer well, winding through tobacco fields on dirt roads in the backseat...
On the title track of her new album, What’s This Death, Amanda Winterhalter sings, “You don’t talk to death, you listen close.” It’s the perfect set-up for the powerhouse 7-track record, which leans in to the stories we tell...
In 1959, in the midst of an American craze for bossa nova, Brazilian director Marcel Camus made his stunning film Black Orpheus, an adaptation of the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice set in the mid-century favelas of Rio...